Sport is likely the most homophobic institution in America. It's more homophobic than the church, and considerably more homophobic than the military. While we know of hundreds of gay priests, and thousands of gay military servicemen, we know of only a handful of openly gay professional athletes.

It is commonly understood, and rightfully so, that this remarkable homophobia in sports is the primary reason there are so few out gay athletes. But there is a strange irony when it comes to male athletics and homophobia. While sports, especially team sports, tend to be extremely homophobic, they may also provide a sanctuary for gays. In fact, there may even be more gay boys on your average high school football team than in your average math class.

This is hard to prove, of course, especially when statistics seem to suggest just the opposite. There are more than 3,100 active professional athletes in the four major team sports in America: baseball, football, hockey, and basketball. Of these 3,100, how many have publicly acknowledged their homosexuality or bisexuality? Aside from basketball player Dennis Rodman, who seems to get off on his sexual ambivalence [that no one really takes seriously], there isn't one.

The average career of a professional athlete in the four major sports is short, and although no one has done an accurate measure, let's assume it's about five years. A rough calculation tells us that during the ‘80s and ‘90s, there have been over 15,000 professional athletes in the four major team sports. Yet not a single athlete has come out while playing, and only a few have come out after retiring. We know that at the very least 5-10% of the population is gay, which means that there should have been up to 1,500 professional gay athletes in the NBA, NFL, MLB, and MLH since 1980.

What's keeping all these gay jocks from coming out of the closet? Some would argue that this is an irrelevant question, that gays simply elect not to join team sports in the first place. And at one time researchers believed that, assuming that gay men didn't play organized sports because they were too effeminate, too weak, or too scared. But in recent years, a few pro athletes have come out of the closet, and many more collegiate and high school athletes have as well. These athletes are proving that gays can and do play sports, which begs the question, how many thousands of gay athletes are hiding behind closet doors?

Unfortunately, the lack of out athletes is not merely an American phenomenon. There have only been two team sport athletes to come out of the closet while actively playing, and neither of them were American.

Jason Fashanu, an English soccer player, was the first team sport player to come out in 1991, and Australian Rugby player Ian Roberts came out in 1995. Three American professional team sport athletes have come out, but all of them after retiring: David Kopay [football] was the first in 1975, followed by Roy Simmons [football] and Glenn Birch [baseball].

However, Dr. Michael Messner, a sport sociologist at USC who studies gay men in sport, argues what many suspect: “There is growing evidence that many [mostly closeted] gay males are competing at all levels of organized sport,” he says.

You might wonder just why a gay man would walk into the lion's den. Why would a gay boy purposely seek out a homophobic environment like the world of sport? Messner suggests that, “Boys learn early that to be gay, to be suspected of being gay, or even to be unable to prove one's heterosexual status, is not acceptable.”

Given that gay men grow up in the same society that straight men do, a society that considers gay men [or effeminate men] to be somehow less of a man, gay men are often desperate to prove their masculinity, and usually to hide their sexuality. Even the gay community values masculinity over effeminacy, as witnessed by the fact that “straight-acting” gays are somehow considered a step higher on the status ladder than “effeminate acting” ones.

Most gay men, and virtually all closeted gay men, feel the need to prove their masculinity, and sports are a great avenue to do this. Sports can help gay men prove to themselves that they are every bit as good as straight men. In fact, David Kopay wrote in his book The David Kopay Story, “I was out to prove that I was in no way less a man because I was homosexual.”

Joining sports as a way of hiding your true sexual orientation, however, brings with it a strange paradox. Gay sport sociologist Dr. Brian Pronger points out that gay men are emerged in an activity that is very homoerotic, but also very homophobic.

Take, for example, the locker room, an extremely homoerotic place where gorgeous, athletic men change, shower and socialize together. There are very few environments where men will allow themselves to do this. Because everyone is aware of the uniqueness of the situation [and the potential for homoerotic desires to develop out of it], the expected behavior in the locker room is pretty simple: act like you have no interest in the fact that everyone is half-naked.

And what better way is there to show that you have no interest in a room of half naked, athletic men than to act homophobic? Therefore, the homoeroticism of the locker room [in many ways] may cause the homophobia of the locker room.

But why are athletes, even untouchable professional athletes, afraid to come out once they have proven their masculinity? Why would a Super Bowl champion quarterback, or even one of history's all time greatest Olympic sprinters, fear coming out after establishing superiority over virtually all other athletes in their field? Why do we find only a handful of gay professional athletes in America, and none in team sports? How did sports, including youth sports, get to be so homophobic in the first place? And most important, what can we do to change it?

Professional athletes are afraid to come out of the closet for many reasons. Among the top are fear of homophobic reactions from their teammates, fans, coaches, and managers. Professional football players say that the macho atmosphere of team sports would make it tough to live together, shower together and fight together with an openly gay player.

And still, old myths die-hard. Professional football coach Johnny Roland told ESPN, “If that person was of that persuasion, I'm not so sure the quality of his toughness.” And football player Darrell Green also suggests to ESPN that there isn't enough space for gays in the locker room.

Professional gay athletes also have to fear losing their positions, being victimized by increased violence against them on the field, and perhaps worst of all, losing their million-dollar endorsements. In fact, homophobia in sports is so bad that the nation's leading sports agent said in an ESPN interview that a gay athlete would have a harder time finding endorsements than a straight athlete who beats his wife.

Why is homophobia so rampant in sports? First, sociologist Brian Pronger suggests that, “Homosexuality undermines, in a positive way, the most important myth of our culture…the myth of gender.” The myth of gender states that men are supposed to be powerful, providing, and dominant, while women are supposed to be nurturing, caring, and submissive. Gay men, however, do not fit the notion of what a masculine person is supposed to be—heterosexual. In fact, a gay athlete is seen as a paradox. “Homosexuality and athletics express contradictory attitudes to masculinity, violation and compliance respectively, their coexistence in one person is a paradox,” Pronger says.

If gay men challenge the notion of masculinity, it may also subvert the notion of the hierarchy of masculinity over femininity. It challenges the myth that straight men are stronger or better than gay men, and may even challenge the gender myth that men are superior to women.

This gender myth can be traced back to the mid 1850s, when most Americans lived and worked on farms. Americans [and Europeans] were too busy and lived too far away from each other to pull people together to play team sports. Although the Civil War popularized baseball [many men had time to kill while waiting to battle] when they returned from the war, sport was reserved more for the recreational pleasure of the rich.

The agrarian way of life began to change in the late 1800s with the slow emergence of the industrial revolution, which brought new methods of earning a living to Americans. Families abandoned the farm life to move to cities, where the father usually worked long hours in a coal mine or industrial factory. The father normally returned home from work after the children had already gone to bed and had much less interaction with his children than he did when working the farm.

This absenteeism of the American father and extra contact with the mother worried the nation. America feared that its male youth would not grow to assume [what it believed] their “proper” gender role. America feared that this would lead boys to grow to be soft, weak, and in short, wussies (Rotundo, 1983).

To counter the fear that boys would grow to be feminine, social programs and sporting teams were created to give boys contact with male role models after school (Meggyesy, 1970).The YMCA came to America in 1851, the American Boy Scouts in 1910, and the 4-H club in 1914. Sports during this time grew considerably larger. Basketball was invented in 1891; the first Rose Bowl was played in 1902; the first World Series in 1903; and hockey was invented in 1917.

Track, boxing, and swimming also grew in popularity, and by the 1920s, America was in its golden age of sport, bustling with professional, semi-professional, and youth leagues.

Modern sport then was founded on the idea of preventing our male youth from possessing characteristics that society associated with femininity. With such goals, it was believed that one sure way to insure that boys would become masculine was to degrade women [misogyny] and to insure they grew up to be straight they bashed gays [homophobia]? Trying to motivate someone to do something out of fear (such as running faster so you are not told you run like a girl) is called negative motivation. Negative motivation has been used to “inspire” young boys to excel in their sporting events ever since.

The fear of being called weak, or being told that you run like a girl, or any suggestion that a boy is women-like, brings laughter from teammates and is supposed to motivate you to perform better. Males gain what I call “masculine points” by feminizing other athletes. The supreme point gainer is, of course, to insult the masculine image of another athlete. To be called a fag, or to even have ones heterosexuality called into reference, is a major blow to the male ego.

All of this anti-gay and anti-women coaching may or may not have promoted the better hitting of a ball or catching of a pass. But it did, however, sufficiently degrade those feminine qualities [nurturing, caring, loving] so that America no longer revered them.

Modern sport then was founded on the idea of preventing our male youth from possessing characteristics that society associated with femininity. With such goals, it was believed that one sure way to insure that boys would become masculine was to degrade women [misogyny] and to insure they grew up to be straight they bashed gays [homophobia]? Trying to motivate someone to do something out of fear (such as running faster so you are not told you run like a girl) is called negative motivation. Negative motivation has been used to “inspire” young boys to excel in their sporting events ever since.

The fear of being called weak, or being told that you run like a girl, or any suggestion that a boy is women-like, brings laughter from teammates and is supposed to motivate you to perform better. Males gain what I call “masculine points” by feminizing other athletes. The supreme point gainer is, of course, to insult the masculine image of another athlete. To be called a fag, or to even have ones heterosexuality called into reference, is a major blow to the male ego.

All of this anti-gay and anti-women coaching may or may not have promoted the better hitting of a ball or catching of a pass. But it did, however, sufficiently degrade those feminine qualities [nurturing, caring, loving] so that America no longer revered them.

Therefore, coaches today are likely to coach in the same homophobic ways that people did a century ago. Until youth sport coaches are required to have a certification that discussed the psychology and sociology of coaching and explains the damage they cause by berating gays and women, the problem will continue.

Fortunately, homophobia in sport is finally being discussed. Sport sociologists are beginning to do research on the subject, and even the media are beginning to examine the issue [ESPN recently devoted an issue of Outside the Lines to the subject of gays in sport]. But the greatest deconstructor of homophobia in sports is likely to be individual gay athletes coming out of the lockers. And even though no professional American team sport athlete has come out while still playing, several individual sport athletes have.

National figure skating champion Rudy Galindo came out in 1995, and eight-time national diving champion David Pichler did so making the Olympic team in 1996. Even former world body building champion “Mr. Universe” Bob Paris came out two years before retiring. Several other notable male athletes have come out after retiring from their sports as well: 1984 Gold medallist and world record holder swimmer Bruce Hayes came out during the gay games in 1990, and two-time Olympic Gold Medallist diver Greg Louganis came out in 1995.

The trail has been blazed and will likely continue to be blazed by unstoppable people. The original trailblazers have been the best of their sports, and this is for good reason. It would probably take an athlete with an amazingly high social status, and a virtually untarnished record, to successfully withstand the blast of coming out. Because of this, progress has been slow. Eventually, professional team sport athletes who aren't super-stars will begin coming out, but their influence in changing society may come second to another group of athletes—high school and college gay athletes.

Largely due to the anonymity of the Internet, gay youth are coming out of the closet in hoards, and gay high school and collegiate athletes are also coming out at an ever-increasing rate. Although they face many of the same homophobic attitudes that pro

players do, when a high school athlete comes out, there's no risk of losing sponsorship or financial contracts, no media harassment, and they're provided more formalized protection under education laws. Additionally, high school athletes are likely to have a core of gay friends outside of their sport, where professional athletes may be too afraid to have gay friends or even be seen in gay areas. Finally, it's an issue of pure numbers—while there are only 1,400 NFL players in America, there are over 194,000 high school football players.

Coaches, too, are slowly beginning to come out. There are currently many openly gay college coaches in the country, and we have seen a handful of openly-gay high school coaches, including myself [I came out as California's first openly gay high school coach at Huntington Beach High School in 1993 [XY 6].

This ground swell of gay high school and college athletes is a force that will have to be reckoned with. When gay athletes no longer allow coaches to use homophobia to “inspire” others, when gay athletes prove that they can be just as good or better than straight athletes, when gay athletes prove that they can't be intimidated back into the closet, we will make great strides toward redefining masculinity and encouraging the acceptance of homosexuality.

It takes a confident and brave athlete to come out at any level. But it has been done before, and you can be accepted [and even admired], all while blazing the trail for others. As homophobia was constructed from the ground up, it may also be deconstructed.

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